Last night, my son was messing around in the house.

One second, everything was normal.

The next second…

Smash.

He fell, split his forehead wide open on the bedframe, and suddenly, we were looking at the kind of gash that makes your stomach drop as a parent.

It was about 9pm, and hearing commotion in a house with 4 young children is nothing out of the ordinary… mind you, seeing my child covered in blood is certainly not.

Needless to say, it was go time.

We needed to get him to the hospital immediately.

Within minutes, we were on the road to the nearest emergency room (which is a stone’s throw from my house), and when we arrived, the woman working the emergency room desk was amazing.

She prioritized getting my child care well before the administrative side of things (she literally entered his name into the system completely wrong, and as I was trying to correct her, she literally said “don’t worry, we can fix that later”).

Try doing that back home!

Within two minutes of arriving, we were in the room with a nurse.

Then an orderly had us in a wheelchair and took us to a private room, and 2 minutes after that, the doctor came in.

However, after a quick glance, he concluded that a plastic surgeon would be necessary to fix the gash.

The plastic surgeon wasn’t on site, but he was called in and arrived in under 30 minutes.

He reassured my wife and me that although the wound was deep and even though it went all the way down to the skull, there was no fracture (thank God). He gave my boy something to numb the area and, with our help, got to work.

We wrapped my boy up in a blanket like a little burrito so he couldn’t squirm around. 

I held his body, my wife held his legs, and the nurse controlled his head… and within 5 (LONG) minutes my boy was all stitched up and was on his way to being “good as new”.

Door to door, the entire ordeal took an hour and a half.

From “oh crap, we gotta go” to being back home in bed… in roughly 90 minutes.

There are a few things worse than seeing your child in pain.

You can stay calm, comfort them and tell them everything is going to be okay, but you can’t take the pain or the fear they’re feeling away.

For the parents out there, you already know this feeling of helplessness.

It’s the worst… with no close second. 

Thankfully, both my wife and I were both able to take him to the hospital (we have great help at home with our nannies, so my other three children were in good hands).

From the moment we arrived, I was reminded once again why I am so grateful my family calls Panama home.

Ten stitches.

Done by a plastic surgeon.

No waiting. No bureaucratic holdups. No BS. 

The service was excellent, the communication was in English, and the staff treated my family wonderfully. 

As I sat there watching my son get patched up, I kept thinking about how different that experience could have been somewhere else…

If we were back in Canada, who knows how long we would have waited?

Five hours?

Ten hours?

Longer?

…and after waiting all that time, would it have been a plastic surgeon stitching up my son’s forehead?

Or would it have been whoever happened to be available in the emergency room that night?

Maybe they would have done a fine job.

Maybe not.

When it is your child, “maybe” is not exactly comforting.

If we were in the U.S, sure, insurance might have covered part of it.

But what about the deductible?

Would there have been an out-of-pocket portion to be paid? 

What about the question of whether a plastic surgeon would even be covered for that type of wound? (even with a premium insurance plan that runs thousands of dollars a year, I doubt it).

There is a strange assumption many people still hold about the level of healthcare available outside their home country (and a fundamental misunderstanding about the cost of paying out of pocket for healthcare).  

They assume familiar means better.

They assume the system they grew up with must be the safest, most advanced and most reliable option simply because it is the one they know.

But familiarity is not the same as excellence.

Just like last night, there are times when living abroad forces you to confront that truth in a very real way. 

Here in Panama (where your tax rate can effectively be zero with the proper setup), my family received fast, professional and high-quality private medical care when we needed it most.

No sitting around all night wondering when someone would finally see us.

No neglecting my son’s care while my wife or I sat on the phone with an insurance company trying to figure out what was covered and what was not.

No feeling like a number waiting to be shuffled from one overworked person to the next.

Just competent people doing their job, treating my son well, and making a stressful situation easier than it would have been in most “first-world” nations where healthcare is touted as “world-class”.

Now, I am not one to rely on ChatGPT for factual answers to complex questions; however, while writing this, I posed it a simple question.

I laid out the entire scenario and asked, “how much would it cost to have an uninsured child receive 10 stitches by a plastic surgeon in The U.S?”

It told me between $2,000 and $8,000 USD.

I paid just under $1200 bucks.

$1183.48 USD is what I paid at the hospital to receive this level of expert care for my son.

Side note: when we arrived home, my wife got a message from the hospital telling us they accidentally undercharged us by six dollars. Normally, fixing this type of clerical error would come with a serious headache… to say the least. Nope. Not the case. They sent a quick request via WhatsApp from Yappy (basically a local payment method similar to PayPal), and within 30 seconds, we were square.

$1189.48 (the actual amount) is real money, yes.

But relative to the care we received, a nominal sum. 

When people think about building a new life abroad, they often only focus on the big strategic elements.

…but those pieces are only part of the equation.

What happens when your child gets hurt?

What happens when you need a doctor quickly?

What happens when something goes wrong in the middle of the night? 

Can you trust the medical system?

Can you communicate clearly?

Can you get access to the right specialist?

If an emergency arises, will you be ok? 

Last night, for my family, the answer was yes, and for the zillionth time, Panama passed that test for us. 

Speak soon,

Mikkel

PS. Come see my adopted home of Panama for yourself on our next Fly’n Buy Tour this coming July. We visit some of the best neighbourhoods in Panama City, explore coastal communities, eat and drink at world-class restaurants, view real estate opportunities first-hand, and we meet with the best offshore service providers to discuss various residency pathways. To secure your spot on the tour before it sells out, visit ExpatMoney.com/Fly.

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